Sunday, 23 February 2014

#55: Deathmoor

DEATHMOOR

Robin Waterfield

Reviewed by Mark Lain

On first
picking it up, four things immediately strike me about this book: 1) It is suspiciously
thin; 2) The cover is appalling; 3) Paragraph 400 is an instant death; 4) Promisingly,
it is by one of the most consistently good FF writers. On playing it, the reality
of these four first impressions can be summarised as: 1) It’s relative brevity
is surely an act of mercy on the player; 2) The cover is worse than the
contents; 3) This is an indication that you can expect to fail umpteen times;
4) Yes, RW’s first three FFs were all good (he wrote the only genuinely
great Sci-Fi FF for a start), but his fourth (this one) is the exception.

Given the
status accorded to the FF books from number 51 onwards as highly sought-after
(and often expensive) collectors’ items that also in playing terms are very rewarding,
#55Deathmoor, whilst still not cheap to get your hands on, has none of
the elements that make the last few books generally so rewarding:

·The
plethora of extra rules to get your head around – missing, the very basic FF
rules are used here (Skill, Stamina, Luck, Provisions, Potion, Gold)

·Lengthy,
descriptive paragraphs that add depth – missing, RW actually seems as bored as
the player (only #4 Starship Traveller
shows the same level of author disinterest in the project) and appears to be desperate
to get this over with

·Rich
conceptual design and depth of setting to give a more “adult” or “advanced FF”
feel – missing, this is the kind of facile effort that would be unsatisfactory
to even the youngest and most undemanding/inexperienced adventure gamer

·No
evidence of play-testing to iron out numerous bugs and continuity errors –
missing, this one actually flows properly (that’s a plus, by the way)

So, other
than the last point, it is not really surprising that this book gets
over-looked and that so few people ever mention it much. Coming as it did
between the high concept boardgame tie-in of Legend Of Zagor and the historically-rich Chaos epic that is Knights Of Doom, Deathmoor must have seemed very tired. Had it been released early
on in the series, it might be easier to have a more favourable opinion of this
book, but it just doesn’t offer enough to be relevant as a later entry.

Easily the
laziest part of this book’s conception is your mission. You are an adventurer
who is currently living it up diving for scarlet pearls off the Isles Of Dawn
when you are called to the court of King Jonthane of Arion as his daughter has
been kidnapped and the villain of the piece is demanding a huge amount of gold
as a ransom. Granted, FF rarely uses the “fighting through perils to save a
Princess” plot idea, but that’s because it’s a hackneyed concept that’s better
suited to Disney than to role-playing. To add insult to injury, however, it’s not
long before you meet two plumbers called Oiram and Igiul (read them backwards)
at which point you realise you are playing Super
Mario Brothers (there are different coloured mushrooms to contend with
later in the book, as well) and that Waterfield really was on auto-pilot with
this one. The opening section actually tells you that you are too late to get
the commission because your rival (Fang-zen) got there first which means the
first part of the adventure proper involves catching up with him and nicking an
all-important document from him that is basically the contract to do the rescue
job – perhaps it would have been easier just to say “Oh well, never mind then”
to the King and have gone off and found a better adventure to get involved in.
Once you’ve got the document you then have to chase an Ogre called Otus who is
the connection between the King/YOU and the kidnapper himself (Bowser,
presumably?) Bowser turns out to be called Arachnos and is an agent of Chaos, but
is not anything like as genocidal as most agents of Chaos, given that he is (on
the surface at least) just in it for the money (rather like RW was when he
wrote this book, I fear!)

And that’s
the plot, crappy but workable, assuming the adventure environment is full of
surprises and intrigue... which it is not, instead it’s full of often inexplicable
instant deaths, illogically looping paths that lead to parts of the moor that would
otherwise be miles from each other if you map it, and lots of new creature types
that don’t seem to exist anywhere else. The final item is not a bad point in
itself (innovation is always welcome) but several of the new creatures just
seem to be other creatures with new names - surely the Pterolins are just Rocs
and Pelagines are Fishmen? Conversely, the Blackhearts (crosses between Dark
Elves and Orcs), the hideous (and wonderfully-named) Tantaflex, and the Semerle
(a missing link fish-reptile thing) are all imaginative inclusions. In most
cases, any unfamiliar creatures are well described, even if those without illustrations
can be a bit hard to visualise, and I really don’t want to imagine the bizarre and
disturbing sex act that spawned the first Troll-Orc! Mention must also go to
the Flintskins, a primitive and wary tribe that you need to be careful when
dealing with (and are they corruptions of Flintstones or Skinflints?)

As is often the
case with later FFs, there are three distinct stages to the adventure, starting
with a look around Arion, then negotiating Deathmoor itself, and finally a
short dungeon that forms Arachnos’ lair. Arion is quite fun (you can play Pinfinger
in an inn) but has nothing that you can’t see in every other largish Titan
conurbation (inns, docks, market, rich megalomaniac’s house), whilst Arachnos’
lair is a bizarre downwards tunnel tumble offering side passages and an
inordinate number of ways to die. As for the main event, Deathmoor itself is tedious,
has little of interest, and is not inherently all that deadly. Instead the
apparent profound stupidity of your character is a major obstacle whilst on the
moor – amongst other idiotic acts you can sleep-walk over a cliff and/or lose
key items in two separate combats without there being any logical reason for
dropping them, other than that the book wants you to. Sadly, RW’s apparent vindictiveness
towards the player is where this book really becomes overly harsh to play and
he seems to be taking his frustration with the project out on YOU:

·Instant
deaths, many of which are off-hand in their handling, are very common and often
make little sense and can come as a real surprise and seem out of context

·Also,
some of the instant deaths could surely be avoided by combat but the book
decides far too often that you are dangerously out-numbered

·It
is possible to fail as soon as you start by making the wrong choice at
paragraph 1

·Failing
to get the document in Arion means you can’t progress beyond that stage and,
even if you do, there’s another 50/50 progress/instantly fail decision to make
as soon as you leave Arion and catch up with Otus

·The
encounter with the Cradoc involves yet another 50/50 life/death decision about
which of its heads you need to cut off

·Luck
tests are in abundance

·Arbitrary
dice rolling to determine your fate is in even greater abundance

·In
the style of Steve Jackson’s tougher books, there are certain points where you
need to make a judgment call on whether to go to a section you learned about
earlier in the book. Unfortunately, the hints that you need to do this are so
subtle and are almost off-hand remarks in the text which means you are fairly unlikely
to pick up on them

·Some
“important” information is of little relevance and can be substituted with
guessing which takes away the feeling of success you should get from what ought
to be moments of achievement

·It
is possible to find a code-breaking document that is incomprehensible and seems
to serve no purpose (or did this get forgotten?)

·Worst
of all, the final showdown with Arachnos can only be won by solving a maths
problem that is so ridiculously difficult that it makes any other FF puzzle
seem like simplicity itself

Oddly, one
area that you would expect to see included in a book this unreasonable would be
tough combats, but most of the foes in Deathmoor
are actually very easy to beat (assuming you have a Skill of at least 9), very
few have special attacks, and some even suffer Attack Strength penalties or can
be weakened by surprise attacks (or dropping a house on them in the case of the
Marsh Orcs, which is the only real injection of light relief anywhere in this
adventure.) Even more out of context are certain scattered acts of unusual generosity
which, whilst few and far between, seem at odds with the generally unbalanced
nature of this book and do add to the feeling that this was thrown together in
a few days with hardly any care. When you fight Fang-zen (your rival who, you
would assume, can give a good account of himself against you), his Skill is two
less than yours, ie he could have a Skill of 5 so he isn’t much of a hardy
adventurer then really. It is also possible to increase your Initial Luck to 14,
and to fully restore your Skill and Stamina by being blessed. Also, money is
not difficult to come by, even if it has scant use once you leave Arion (and
you start with 20 GP anyway.)

The subject
of the Initial Luck increase gives me mixed feelings. If you also use the
Potion of Fortune you could actually have an Initial Luck of 15 which is an unusually
high allowance in a FF book, but you will certainly need it due to the number
of Luck tests that this book throws at you. The location of the +2 Luck bonus
(a temple that is a relic of the ancient civilisation that used to live where
Deathmoor now is) exposes another example of the lazy construction of this
adventure. We are told about the civilisation early on in the story, yet this
is almost entirely ignored for most of the book bar a couple of isolated
moments.

In some parts,
there are moments of unpleasant grisliness, especially when we are told that
the word “WAIT” has been spelled out in the severed limbs of the 15-year-old Princess’
friends, and Waterfield does seem slightly obsessed with getting you lost in
misty marshes and/or burning people to death in his FFs. One of the real
strengths, though, of his books is the lengths he goes to do describe
environments/experiences/backgrounds to create a real sense of place, yet this
is all but absent from Deathmoor.
Only when you need a compass (or have to blunder aimlessly around without one) do
you get the feeling of an oppressive moorland – compare his writing in this
book with his background descriptions in #18
Rebel Planet or his dreamscapes in #28
Phantoms Of Fear and it’s hard to believe this is the same author. There
are moments of player belittling that bring to mind Space Assassin, “That was stupid” being probably the worst example
here of giving you little motivation to stay interested. Even the winning
paragraph can only be bothered to stretch to a few sentences and there is hardly
any feeling of victory to be had from it.

One of the
new creatures offered here is a Cradoc (half Dragon-half Ogre) and it is this
that graces the cover in what is amongst the worst FF cover images ever. The
Cradoc just looks ridiculous – what was Terry Oakes thinking? Furthermore, this
is another example of a FF cover that shows a far from important moment from
the book, but it does at least reflect the lackadaisical nature of the package
as a whole. If there is one person who has made an effort, it’s Russ Nicholson,
whose internal art is as effective as always, even if most of the new creatures
are quite manically drawn, whereas the more familiar moments are more
controlled in their rendering.

Overall, Deathmoor is a fairly minor entry to
the series which is blighted by harshness and just generally not being very
interesting. It is no surprise then that it has faded into relative obscurity
and is surely of more interest to collectors than to gamers. Play it if you are
curious and can get hold of it, but this is easily one of the least essential
from an adventuring perspective (which is, after all, the real reason why FF exists.)

As you know I just regained a copy of this from Mr Aukett and decided to revisit it. Your review simply covers everything really and that Cradoc on the cover seems to be the love child of Geigers' Alien and John Carpenters The Thing with a toxic fart greem background. I don't like over descriptive references but what winds me up most are ones that are barely a sentence long. Pretty bog standard and not a worthy submission from Robin Waterfield.